obituary page from todays paper; one copy per person or group (Option: Collect obituary pages for a month prior to doing the activity, and provide each student with a copy of an obituary page from a different date.

Many newspaper obituaries do not report the age at death. Instead, they report the deceaseds date of birth. If that is the case, students will have to subtract (current year minus deceaseds year of birth) to determine the age at death.

You might give all students (or groups of students) a copy of the current obituary page, or you might save the obituary pages from your local paper over the course of a month. Give each student the obituary page from a different date. If each student works from a different page, create a class chart to compare data collected.

Adapt the Lesson
Adapt the lesson to match your students needs and skills:
Students might figure the average (mean), median, and mode of the data for a given date.

mean (average) add the age at death for each person listed on the obituary page, then divide by the total number of people listed

median list the ages of the days deceaseds in order. Which age is in the middle? (The median age is the middle value; the number of ages above and below the median should be the same.)

mode the age that is repeated most often in the days death notices

range the span between the ages (youngest age at death to oldest age at death as reported in the days obituary page)

Students might use the free Create a Graph tool to create graphs to illustrate the data they collect.

Assessment

Assess students based on the accuracy of the data they report. Did they figure the average correctly?

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

MATHEMATICS: Number and OperationsGRADES 3 - 5NM-NUM.3-5.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number SystemsNM-NUM.3-5.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another NM-NUM.3-5.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable EstimatesGRADES 6 - 8NM-NUM.6-8.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number SystemsNM-NUM.6-8.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another NM-NUM.6-8.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable EstimatesGRADES 9 - 12NM-NUM.9-12.1 Understand Numbers, Ways of Representing Numbers, Relationships Among Numbers, and Number SystemsNM-NUM.9-12.2 Understand Meanings of Operations and How They Relate to One Another NM-NUM.9-12.3 Compute Fluently and Make Reasonable Estimates

MATHEMATICS: Data Analysis and ProbabilityGRADES 3 - 5NM-DATA.3-5.1 Formulate Questions That Can Be Addressed With Data and Collect, Organize, and Display Relevant Data to AnswerNM-DATA.3-5.3 Develop and Evaluate Inferences and Predictions That Are Based on Data GRADES 6 - 8NM-DATA.6-8.1 Formulate Questions That Can Be Addressed With Data and Collect, Organize, and Display Relevant Data to AnswerNM-DATA.6-8.3 Develop and Evaluate Inferences and Predictions That Are Based on DataGRADES 9 - 12NM-DATA.9-12.1 Formulate Questions That Can Be Addressed With Data and Collect, Organize, and Display Relevant Data to AnswerNM-DATA.9-12.3 Develop and Evaluate Inferences and Predictions That Are Based on Data

MATHEMATICS: ConnectionsGRADES Pre-K - 12NM-CONN.PK-12.1 Recognize and Use Connections Among Mathematical Ideas
NM-CONN.PK-12.2 Understand How Mathematical Ideas Interconnect and Build on One Another to Produce a Coherent Whole NM-CONN.PK-12.3 Recognize and Apply Mathematics in Contexts Outside of Mathematics